Tag Archive: Penalty

It seems that the Welfare Reform Bill will act to do more than just cut the level of benefits for “the most vulnerable.” For amongst the Government’s wide-ranging enactments is one which seems less insidious than it really is. This is the part of the Bill which seeks to change existing Housing Benefit Rules.

It is called the ‘Under-occupancy’ article and plaintively states that, if a Housing Association or Council Tenant occupies a dwelling with more bedrooms than actual occupants. They must forfeit a proportion of their Housing Benefit for each of the ‘unoccupied’ rooms. This ostensibly means that a man or woman occupying a two bedroomed house after a spouse has died, or a parent occupying a three bedroomed house after their children have left and they have divorced will be forced to ‘downsize’ or will have to pay a penalty – approx. £14.00 per unoccupied bedroom.This might seem ‘reasonable’ to the Taxpayer, but, its consequences are only just visible, and for those who are yet to experience redundancy and a huge cut in salary and therefore, living standards – it is one of the most vicious pieces of legislation to have been passed into Law!

So. Government have enacted a policy which will – in its ultimate expression, create ‘economic ghettoes’ populated by families who have perhaps lost a parent, parents who have children who have gone to University, single people who have divorced and other benefits claimants who have been dispersed from their original dwelling.

However, this is not the whole story, because in the course of my own enquiries about the possibility of moving to a two-bedroomed house elsewhere in the City I found that, though an unwritten rule, one cannot move from an area of lower Local Council Tax to an area of Higher Local Council Tax even if one is actually ‘downsizing.’ This ridicules the whole notion of ‘social mobility’ highlighted by Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg. In fact, what it means in real terms is that anyone unfortunate enough to be either unemployed, sick, disabled or mentally disabled will find themselves confined, imprisoned and detained wiithin a clearly strictured set of Economic Ghettoes, from which there can neither be escape nor movement.

1. There can be no escape because the eg. ‘Post-Code’ associated with the address will always act as a disincentive to employers, banks and health authorities.

2. There can be no movement (except downwardly into homelessness and destitution) because it is made impossible for anyone who is ‘downsized’ to upgrade their living space by virtue of 1.

Of course, when applied at a National Level, the consequences of such a policy become clear. Large swathes of the North of England will soon become ‘dumping grounds’ for the South of England’s unemployed ( who are more likely to consist of ethnic minorities and large, nuclear families who have lived in poverty for most of their lives) , disabled and ill.

In conclusion.

This suggests that it has always been the hidden motivation and intention of the Coalition to create Economic Ghettoes consisting of families and individuals on Benefits who are unable to move to find work, to move socially or to even aspire to do so.

Families, single-people, the permanently disabled, the mentally disabled and ill and varying classes of the sick are all to be effectively ‘imprisoned’ in the North of England: while the South of England lives under the impression that the North is simply being punished by The Coalition and Parliament for its economic ‘weakness.’

In essence, those who are regarded as being ‘economically damaging’ to the expensive, high-standard of living and affluence (though not due purely to its own lack-of- industry) of the South of England will be essentially ‘repatriated’ to the cheaper, lower standard of living and(alas!) increasingly far less affluent North.

FYI. The proof and evidence of my assertion is already in the public domain, for Benefits Claimants in areas close by the newly constructed Olympic Stadium in Newham, London, were being forced by the Local Council to move to “smaller: more suitable properties” according to Tory Council Officials to an area in Halifax some 120 miles from the Capital as a beginning gambit and the opening move in what may yet become known as the “London Clearances..”

Britain is to be seggregated.

More significantly (but a question which Media Plaudits and Local Politicians seem to be unable or unwilling to ask)

What exactly does this mean for the Economic Survival of the North of England? Or is the North of England to be sacrificed as it was in the 1980’s in the Government’s destruction and wholesale dismantling of the Manufacturing, Mining and Steel Industries?

Is the North of England, (along with its rising population) going to be simply ignored: marginalized and patronized by the hectoring and condescension of austerity – mad Parliament?

Because, if the North of England’s unemployment figures (that is, those which have not been ‘massaged down’ by inclusion in Ian Duncan “Arbeit Macht Frei” Smith’s ‘Workfare’ figures. Work which has already been statistically proven to have no significant or relevant economic benefit or effect upon the GDP of the United Kingdom.) are effectively allowed to increase to the point where there are more than 500 applicants-per-post or the percentage of working-age adults on benefits passes beyond 15% – 17% of the population, economic recovery in the North will be made almost impossible for many years and possibly decades.

If central Government does nothing to improve and enable the economy of the North of England.. The North of England must take action and separate itself from the Westminster umbilical. The North must not become the dumping ground for those unfortunate enough that Parliament have decided they must no longer be allowed to live in London.

Thus David Cameron and Nick Clegg are both involved in creating a very British kind of ‘lebensraum’ (Ger. ‘Living-space.’) and we, as a Nation are plunged backwards into the true nineteen thirties nature and myopic intentions of this increasingly and fanatically self-obsessed and fascist, authoritarian, unyeildingly and unflinchingly ruthless Government.

A modern–day, 21st Century British Government who have ‘borrowed’ extensively the economic and social policies of Adolf Hitler! Once thought a ‘madman’ and ‘psychopath’ – now the model of Politics in Great Britain circa 2012.

This is surely the beginning of UK Wide – ‘ECONOMIC APARTHEIDT?’ (and worse…..)